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I have an Olympus body (E-PL1) and a Panasonic lens (100-300mm zoom), and haven't noticed any special problems. It feels kind of silly to have 'paid' for in-lens stabilization that I keep turned off, but even when I've accidentally knocked the switch into the on position, it doesn't ruin the average shot (it makes for odd effects during long exposures on a ...

First, the only Micro Four-Thirds macro current is the Leica 45mm F/2.8.
The easiest thing to adapt to Micro Four-Third are Four-Third lenses, since they are designed to work in exactly the same way with an all-electronic interface. When you adapt other lenses, you will usually lose features like autofocus or stop-down metering. Here
are all current ...

Most P&S I have used does amazing jobs with the built-in presets (Scene modes)! Though most people think the presets are targeted towards amateurs, but trust me they are not! The companies have invested heavy amount of research and money to configure these presets often using real life feedback from very experienced photographers. So I'd not ...

Can you do shutter button half-press to focus? That is usually an easy workaround.
Just focus on a simple object with the same exact distance, half-press the shutter button, then recompose (keep the button half-pressed, target the camera on the mirror), then press the button fully.
Usually works with most cameras...
Another way is to put a ...

From the Exif Info,
The normal photo has exposure 1/60s, ISO 80 and f4.9 without flash, focal length 13.6mm.
The purple one has exposure 1/60s, ISO 1000 and f5.9 with flash, focal length 33mm. This picture should have been overexposed by at least 3 stops + flash if you had taken it with the same lighting as the normal picture.
Its possible that the ...

Almost all these systems work in a similar way, be it iDynamic (Panasonic), DRO (Sony), Adaptive D-Lighting (Nikon), HTP (Canon), etc.
What they do is adjust the exposure so that to capture more details in the highlights. This causes under-exposure in the shadow areas which the camera compensates for by boosting levels there which reveals the downside of ...

So let me get this straight.
You have a small, light weight camera that can use a good selection of lenses, and you are thinking of changing systems. You like the camera, it weighs less with a lens on than a Nikon DSLR does without. If you are travelling, the weight is not going to dig into you back.
My questions are why change?
Have you reached the ...

I'm not familiar with Panasonics, but metering modes usually consist of:
Evaluative/matrix metering (it takes readings from x spots all over the frame and averages them)
Center-weighted average (like the first one, except that reading from the center influences the result more than the rest of the frame)
Spot metering (takes reading only from small area of ...

The E is a regional suffix. You point to the Australian Panasonic site but on the Canadian one for example, there is no version with the E. Quite commonly the E letter is for Europe and the product is almost always identical except that it may have been certified by a different set of standards.

Regarding getting money back - call the dealer, we can't help you.
For future - buy brand batteries :) When you knowingly buy a camera that is publicly said to operate only with brand batteries and you pay a lot of money for it - why try to cheat then?
I've personally never had good experience with 3rd party batteries and have cried but paid ~$150 for the ...

Aha, I figured it out. The logic used by the DMC-G2 camera for the "RESET COUNTER" appears to be:
Increment the group nnn (P100, P101, etc.) by 1.
If the photo Pnnn0001.JPG does not exist, set the photo counter to this image and stop.
Otherwise, increment the group nnn by 1. (Wraparound '999' -> '100')
If we haven't tried this group # before, go to step 2.
...

The bokeh is influenced by the aperture you choose. It is not an effect.
The wider the aperture you choose, the less depth-of-field you get which is what makes bokeh appear. With the Olympus you have more latitude to choose less depth-of-field but you can choose an equally large depth-of-field on both camera.
The Olympus ZX-1 is really nice and produce ...

I wouldn't consider APS-C a "larger format" than u4/3 (somewhere on here there was an answer where someone pointed out that the difference between u4/3 and APS-C was smaller than the difference between APS-C and full-frame). If you want substantially better pictures you'd be better off moving up to full-frame -- which isn't cheap.
But since you've got a ...

So, you're right: you're foiled because the Lumix FZ18 isn't an interchangeable lens camera. The adapter you link for is for Panasonic's Micro-Four thirds cameras, like the Lumix GF1, which do use interchangeable lenses. It kind of confusing for Panasonic to use the same branding for both those cameras and their attached-lens models, but there it is.
The ...

The Panasonic Lumix G 20mm F/1.7 ASPH is better. As its name says, it has a maximum aperture of F/1.7 compared to a maximum of F/3.5 at wide-angle for either currently available 14-42mm lenses.
This means the 20mm lets in more than 4X more light and will let you shoot with less light or with the same amount of light at a lower ISO or faster shutter-speed or ...

In general, lens based optical stabilisation ought to work very well with a 150mm lens. Modern designs are capable of three stops (8x increase in exposure time) or more. As to whether it will make a large difference to what you can shoot, that depends on how much light you have. Of course image stabilisation does nothing to help you with moving subjects, so ...

Shading Compensation is normally called Vignetting Correction. It simply corrects for a known falloff in light intensity towards the edges of the frame.
The cameras has to know the lens attached; otherwise it won't work, which is why you sometimes need a firmware upgrade when newer lenses become available.
Vignetting is one of the easiest and least ...

This is unfortunately the expected behavior for the camera you purchased. It is an extremely basic model with a very limited ISO range for the sensor and a fairly slow lens for the size. It's really more designed for taking daytime and well lit photos and is basically the equivalent of a cheap camera phone, but with a very basic lens put on it to give it ...

The image quality of a 4/3 and Micro Four-Thirds camera is exactly the same since the sensors are the same size. Therefore you can expect better image quality from newer 3/4 or Micro 4/3 cameras due to technological improvements.
It is normal that there will be differences when changing models and even though what you are getting will be some kind of ...

My Oly EPL2 works well with my Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 prime. No quirks at all. The autofocus and image quality work precisely as one would expect.
I can't say on the 25 mm f/1.4, but there seems to be a good ethic of m43 interoperability.

Reduction of light by 1 or more stops, depending on the specific design.
An additional set of refracting elements in the light path, thus an additional distortion / aberration / Image Quality reduction factor.
Observable decrease in sharpness at high contrast edges within image.
In the case of add-on extenders specifically: Dust between the main lens front ...

No software is required.
You need a Nikon F-mount lens of your choice plus a Lens Baby Tilt Transformer. This is an adapter that takes advantage of the greater flange distance of the Nikon F-mount compared to the Micro Four-Thirds mount which adds Tilt-Shift capability in between. Very clever actually.
Specifically, you do NOT need to buy a tilt-shift lens ...

The AVCHD directory is for video files. I asked a similar question on another site (can't find it at the moment though). But it looks like you've gotten the gist of what they do. Wikipedia's page on AVCHD lists this structure as well:
Not sure where there is an official reference though.

The Panasonic DMC-ZS7 / TZ10 has a sports mode. You could try that. You could also try Aperture Priority AE mode, select the largest aperture possible at the focal length you choose(F3.3 - 4.9). You could also adjust the ISO sensitivity higher, but not too high that the amount of noise or grain is too much for you. A high value would be ISO 800 or 1600, but ...

Image stabilization is generally regarded as being both more useful and more effective at longer focal lengths. See what is effectively the opposite question to this at How useful is image stabilisation below 200mm, really?, noting that for the normal rule of thumb for shutter speed the crop factor applies. For Micro Four Thirds, that's 2×, so, roughly, ...

Today's compact cameras are technical marvels, and the image quality you can get from them is outstanding — provided you set your expectations appropriately. Your particular camera is about the size of deck of playing cards, yet includes a lens that zooms from almost ultra-wide angle to decent telephoto. And, the low-light quality will easily exceed what you ...

As others have noted, this is a fairly basic camera, so you're lacking a lot of control over how it creates images. But there are still a few things you can do to get a bit better results in low light.
First, use the lens at the widest angle whenever possible. This is where the lens lets in the most light and where motion blur from low shutter speeds will ...

To find defects on mirror surfaces you need to use coaxial light. I buy them from Advanced Illumination.
You can also make them yourself, buying one way surface mirror at Edmund optics and a light plate (uniform area light).
The best versions are made from cube prisms, though.
Example